Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

The brothers Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky (1925 –1991) and Boris Natanovich Strugatsky (1933 – 2012) were Soviet Russian writers who are inextricably linked as collaborators in some of the best and most provocative science fiction beyond US and British shores and beyond — and influenced by — Stanislaw Lem of Poland. Despite the Cold War, their books crawled to some recognition in the West in the Sixties and Seventies, often in garish DAW paperback editions. I hazard a guess that the 1979 film “Stalker,” directed by Andrei Tarkovsky with a screenplay by the brothers based loosely on Roadside Picnic, ignited a re-reading of the original brilliant novel. This naturally led to an interest in all their other writings. Their complete works in Russian run to 33 volumes. Meanwhile, here in the US, Chicago Review Press is doing a splendid job as their publisher.